


and write this on your chest

by MagicalSpaceDragon



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Depression, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Post-Transformers: Lost Light 25, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:21:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21782839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicalSpaceDragon/pseuds/MagicalSpaceDragon
Summary: Rodimus fights his way back, slowly.
Relationships: Drift | Deadlock & Rodimus
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	and write this on your chest

**Author's Note:**

> Cards on the table, folks, I don't have an outline or an endgame or any kind of plan here. It's just... a ventfic I got tired of waiting for someone else to write.

So. He calls Drift.

Not… not right away. It takes him a while to work up to it. To cut through the shame and the what-ifs and the knowledge that there's nothing he could even _say._

So, alright, he calls Drift, but it takes him longer than it should. It takes him long enough to throw out all the empty bottles that have been collecting in his hab for—a while. And then long enough to swallow his pride and ask one of the Exitus's medics to come make him get rid of all the full ones, too. She's ecstatic he's finally listening to their advice, and—and maybe it's a little pathetic, how good it makes him feel to have someone be proud of him for something so small, but at this point he'll fucking take it.

"Have you considered making an appointment with someone?" she asks somewhere in the middle of all of that, like it's something you can just _talk_ about. Maybe it is, now. Maybe he's been too caught up in his own head to notice.

"I haven't exactly had great experiences with therapists," he admits. Fucking Froid. Fucking _Sunder._ Fucking… _whoever_ that one was, the one who saw him having one of too many breakdowns to count and decided to twist the knife just that little bit further, because _why not,_ right? "I… it's been…"

"I get it," she says more gently than anyone has a right to. "It's like that for a lot of veterans." And he's still not used to that, either, the change from _soldier_ to _veteran,_ the number of mechs around him who've never seen war or had to kill. He's the outsider now, just like always. "I could recommend some resources? The field's gotten a lot bigger than it used to be, you have options."

"I'll think about it," he lies. Except when she leaves with the highgrade she sends him a list even though he never said _yes,_ and some of it's articles about therapy and common misconceptions and how to shop around and— _no,_ okay, he can't, he just _can't—_ but then he keeps skimming and some of it's self-help books and lists of little things he can do every day and. Well. Maybe. No promises, he tells himself, but _maybe._

It takes him longer than that to call Drift. It takes him long enough to cave and buy himself a copy of the self-help book that looks least likely to make him gag on the positivity he can't even pretend to feel anymore, and then it takes him long enough to start reading it.

It's—okay, maybe it's the one written by Decepticons, for Decepticons. And maybe it focuses a lot on experiences that he's never had. The Decepticon experience, the MTO experience, the, the, the fearing for your life because the DJD _existed_ somewhere out there experience—

He can't read that part. Maybe someday. Not now.

—but there are parts that resonate in spite of how very much not the target audience he is. There are parts about life before the war, for one. Parts about being small and helpless and invisible and desperately, desperately trying to get someone, anyone, to _listen,_ to take you _seriously._ And that—he thinks he's over it, most of it, most of the time. But it still hits hard enough to make him grateful he's reading it alone in his hab.

It's written in nice, straightforward language that doesn't make his optics glaze over. So he keeps picking it up, and reading it, and wondering if this or that sentence is how Drift always felt, if maybe there were things they never did say to each other.

(There's no "maybe" about it.)

In the time it takes him to call Drift, he reads the whole damn thing. It feels like it doesn't do anything, at first, and then one day he almost turns down Thunderclash's latest open invitation to a game night in the common room, just on reflex, except suddenly he's remembering every last word about isolating yourself and pretending you're okay because you can't afford _not_ to be, and how that'll kill you, a day at a time. And then maybe he's saying yes instead. Maybe somehow he has fun. Maybe the horrible empty weight in his spark feels a little bit lighter for a while.

He picks up another datapad, one aimed at Autobots. He doesn't relate to all of that one either, but maybe that's alright. While he's still working his way through it, he winds up spotting _another_ one on shore leave, except instead of being about life after the war, it's about spirituality through interior design. His first thought is _Drift would buy that just to annoy Ratchet_ and his second thought is _I have to have it._

It's not Spectralist, it's actually not even Cybertronian, but it lines up with Spectralist principles pretty well. The power of colors and symbolism, the importance of maintaining a positive flow of energy, the… everything. He makes notes in the margins while he reads, starts doodling room layouts whenever he's on a boring shift. He tries to tidy up his hab piece by piece, because it turns out getting rid of the bottles just made room for other garbage and he needs it out of the way if he wants to rearrange furniture.

And… that's about how long it takes him to call Drift. Long enough to have a dozen different room ideas saved to a datapad, color-coded and labeled with the spots he's thinking of putting the types of crystals that'll promote emotional healing. Long enough to think he might actually be able to follow through on it.

"I was starting to think you'd never call," Drift says fondly enough that they could both pretend the honesty isn't there if they wanted to.

"That's fair," Rodimus says instead of being _that_ stupid. "I've been… trying to get my life together a bit more first."

"Mm. How's that going?"

It's the most stilted, awkward conversation he's ever had with Drift. Including during the war when Drift was still the recent defector who expected everyone to leave him for dead. Including when Rodimus was trying to find a way to apologize for _everything,_ and honestly failing pretty miserably. He asks how Drift is holding up, Drift gives him a non-answer that he takes to mean _well enough, but you don't get to hear about the details,_ which, fair, definitely fair, it's not like he's been holding it together great either. They talk about stupid stuff that doesn't matter and it's—not the worst, even though it's weird and not anything like they used to be. Rodimus decides not to bring up the interior design book, even though Drift probably would have loved hearing about it a few years ago. Redecorating as part of a move into a new phase of life is—probably kind of a sore spot right now.

They say their awkward goodbyes. Rodimus promises not to wait so long before the next call. Drift might even believe him. Life goes on.


End file.
